Berkshire Beyond Buffett: Modesty and Simplicity

This is my fourth installment of notes and summary tweets of Larry Cunningham’s perspicacious book, Berkshire Beyond Buffett: The Enduring Value of Values. If you’ve missed any of the tweets or posts, see them in order here: I, II, and III (and follow on Twitter: @ActiveInvesting). I’ve selectively shared nuggets from Larry’s book and I’m finding Twitter’s 140 character limit to be just-right for capturing some of the highlights to share with others that will also spark my memory of the greater detail in the book; this also preserves the bulk of Larry’s hard work.

The first note below is from chapter 8 — the full chapter is available online, but as I’ve said previously, if you’re going to spend the time to download it, you might as well get and read the whole book!

In my last installment, I mentioned that while reading Berkshire Beyond Buffett I began thinking out loud whether Buffett’s use of stock in acquisitions over the years, seemingly to avoid debt and to sustain float, was in hindsight a mistake that can be measured on the order of magnitude — and also, it seems it could partially be due to the selling families wanting at least some portion of the deal in Berkshire stock (Cunningham has indeed pointed out this desire at least once thus far). Part of this question about using stock (mostly reluctantly) in acquisitions was addressed as you’ll see below.

Jim Weber, CEO, $BRK.B’s Brooks running shoe sub: I’ve never had so much autonomy in my career and never felt so accountable & responsible.